Tim Blair
–,
Tuesday,
April,
26,
2011,(4:58am)

Another passerby came over to investigate the hubbub, and I have no real reason to post her picture except to lure in as much male Web traffic as possible. In fact, I might as well not even write a caption for this picture, because I know you’re not reading it.

Tim Blair
–,
Tuesday,
April,
26,
2011,(4:10am)

Any asylum seeker convicted of a crime while in detention will fail the Government’s character test and almost certainly face deportation.

Changes to the immigration laws will make it easier to send criminals back to their country of origin or, at the very least, prevent them from being allowed to apply for permanent protection visas.

Federal Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said that if the laws are passed they would come into force from today, meaning they will cover any troublemakers convicted over the violent riots at Villawood last week and at Christmas Island last month.

Tim Blair
–,
Monday,
April,
25,
2011,(9:21pm)

At least federal Labor still has two years to turn things around. That’s the optimistic line currently being run by the few remaining federal Labor optimists.

More likely is that Labor federally is currently where NSW Labor was in 2009 – down and on the way further down. When favourable polling is somewhere at 30 per cent, that means voters who have never cast a ballot for a party other than Labor are now in play.

It’s no easy deal to secure the swing voters required to form government when your formerly rusted-on voters are dripping with WD-40 and looking for another home. And the next time around, seeing what happened after Labor scored preferences in 2010, that home might not be Green. As we saw in NSW, once the Labor faithful are sufficiently revolted, they break right rather than left.

But where there’s two years, there’s hope. Before we get to my offer of a right-wing death beast plan for Julia Gillard’s and Labor’s revival, let’s run through the things the party definitely cannot do, beginning with …

We had our own version of Stephen Harper running Australia. He was John Howard. Primarily because of the climate change issue, along with some workplace reform issues, he lost government and lost his own seat in an election in 2007.

We had a more left-leaning government come to power. Kevin Rudd was the Prime Minister … but it became very difficult for the Prime Minister to push forward a price on carbon in Australia, a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme.

In the middle of last year he announced he was going to defer that – and the Australian public wouldn’t stand for it. They wanted action. And so his popularity plummeted, the party realised it was in danger, they deposed him and put another person in as Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.

She went to an election last October with a promise to set up a climate commission to engage Australians on the issue …

The election was held in August, not October. Gillard didn’t promise to set up a climate commission; she promised a citizens’ assembly composed of random people selected from census data (also, the idea was dropped after the election). And Flannery completely forgets this:

Luckily, Flannery’s Canadian interviewer remembers, although he’s also an idiot:

Now, she campaigned against a carbon tax and eventually changed her mind because she sensed the population wanted it. I mean, what’s going on in Australia?

There is a very strong feeling that we need to address this issue … there is just a very strong public feeling.

The strong feeling is massively against a carbon tax. Flannery lives in a fantasy world. (Incidentally, Flannery claims in his Canadian interview that “a solid 40 per cent” of Australians support action on climate. But only a couple of months earlier, Flannery told the BBC that 60 per cent were supportive. Those town hall meetings are working a treat.)

For governments, their word is their bond. Trust is the only commodity they trade in—both with the voter and with other governments around the world. If you don’t have trust, if your word is not your bond, then you become a laughing stock or an untrustworthy partner. And that is immensely damaging for countries. It is sort of really sad … I just don’t think any country can afford to do that.

One more reminder:

Flannery now earns $180,000 per year to promote the Gillard government’s carbon tax policy. Word is bond.